How to Build a Great Engineering Culture Tanja Lichtensteiger - Engineering Manager @GrappleShark

My Engineering Journey Engineering Manager • Campaigns - K8s, Kotlin, Kafka, Java • Promos - JS, React, Node.js, AWS • Bet Transactions - JS, React, Java, Node.js • Bet Rep - K8s, Kotlin, Kafka, Java • TDS - Kotlin, Java, AWS • Native - iOS/Android (Swift / Kotlin) KV-Informatik Apprentice (Business Information Systems) • Oracle • Open-Source 18+ Years @GrappleShark

Engineering Culture? @GrappleShark

People & Teams • Hire for attitude, potential & resilience • Hire smarter/better than you, pay them well • Job Satisfaction • Autonomy, Mastery • Complexity • Connection between effort & reward • Loosely coupled, highly aligned squads • Minimise blast radius • Two pizzas • Autonomy with guardrails @GrappleShark

Psychological Safety • Encourage collaboration & debate • Let them be who they are at work as they are at home • Encourage Diversity • No Ego @GrappleShark

Fail Fast • Fail fast, learn fast • Find out sooner! • Get them pushing to production environments asap • Breakdown to little steps • Iterate quickly • learn what works fast • And quickly fix what doesn’t • Chaos Engineering, anybody? @GrappleShark

Feedback • How do they know? • Honest, transparent + frequent • No Ego • Learning Opportunity • Every 3 months formal performance check ins • No Surprises • 360 reviews • Clear expectations, boundaries • Feedback goes two ways @GrappleShark

Build Better People • People = Asset • Invest in their Learning • Friday PM • Funds for conferences, training, events, materials • Regular 1:1 • Help them become better: • Technologists • Human beings! @GrappleShark

@GrappleShark

@GrappleShark [email protected] grappleshark